


Five Reasons Sherlock Wore Lipstick and One Reason She Didn't

by okapi



Series: Your Extra Time and Your Kiss [4]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Ficlet, 5+1 Things, Angst, Drug Use, F/F, Fem!Lestrade, Fem!Sherlock, Fem!mycroft, Gen, Genderswap, Grief/Mourning, Lipstick & Lip Gloss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-21 06:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1541153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A 5+1 series of 221B ficlets, featuring lipstick. A (mostly) genderswapped AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Defiance

_Poor thing._ That’s what they were all saying. In their heads, under their breaths, behind their hands, a few of the most dithering, to her face. _Poor thing._ Mother, dead. Father, well, it was better left unsaid, and that sister. _Poor, poor thing._

Absurd since the whole situation had made her anything but poor. She was a very wealthy girl, with Mycroft’s puppet strings, of course, but nevertheless. Not poor at all.

She sat at the dressing table, waiting for Mycroft’s knock. Her shoes were black; her tights were black. Knickers, black; dress, black. She pinned her dark hair tightly to her head. On the edge of the table was her hat, black, but without a veil, because there was no shroud long enough, no curtain dark enough to hide her from the tut-tuts and the pitying glances. So why bother?

She looked in the mirror and began lining her eyes, kohl black. She would not cry. She would not give the world—Mycroft included—the satisfaction of seeing her mourn.

She looked at the array of lipsticks on the table. An appropriate nude. A civilized pink. Perhaps, even the palest, most respectful mauve, to match the flowers, of course.

Her clothing was black; her soul—indeed if she’d ever had one—was black; but her lips, they would be blood.


	2. Camouflage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my genderswapped AU, Mycroft was married to a man for fifteen years. Her divorce is described in [Crack in the Ice](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1090654/chapters/2195152).

The picture of health. That was what Sherlock was painting on her face. Smooth skin, bright eyes, glowing cheeks. With creams and powers, she painted over the shadows of insomnia and fatigue, of stimulants and opioids, of malnutrition and dehydration.

The last was the toughest. She could feign vitality, but her lips were still parched. She scrubbed the dead skin off, coated them with petroleum jelly, and carefully painted a rosy smile. She studied her handiwork. No sign of a runaway train—with no track and no brakes—staring back at her in the mirror.

Rose. She had stolen with lipstick with less care than she had chosen it. Not too bright, not too muted. The colour was the colour of her own lips, plus a little oomph to say ‘See, all is right with the world. Give me money.’

Money. She needed money. She could borrow it or steal it, but the quickest way to facilitate an immediate departure from her current address and secure more suitable lodgings, was to beg for it. From Mycroft.

Sherlock loitered. Then, she spotted her, but in the bustle of mid-day, she disappeared.

WHAM!

Rosy smears streaked with red appeared on the brick. She felt her shoulder and elbow nearly wrench from their sockets.

“Don’t appall me when I’m about to be a bride.”

 


	3. Experimentation

“You like chemistry.”

Sherlock looked up from her fortress of books.

“I like chemistry,” continued the dark-haired girl, fingering a book that was Sherlock’s south turret. “Let’s study together.”

“No.”

“Why not? I know a lot of things,” pouted the girl.

“What do you know?”

“I know that you’re bored.”

_Bored!_ University—apart from the libraries and the laboratories—had proved tedious, and Sherlock had disappeared after three days.

“I know you’re living in this library.”

_Homeless!_ The only thing more tedious than lectures was shared living quarters. Mycroft had cut her off, so she’d made her home in the only place she felt comfortable: among books. Nobody had noticed.

Until now.

“I know that you’re interested in crime,” the girl nodded to Sherlock’s north wall, “I like detective stories and detectives. Do you like poisons?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that in the Renaissance people sold poisoned lipstick?” The girl twisted a tube in front of Sherlock, and a coppery brown tint appeared that matched the girl’s lips. “You can impregnate lipstick with all kinds of things. Poisons. Allergens. Even _fun_ things.” The girl’s eyes danced.

She held the lipstick out. “Want to try? It’ll add colour to your face. To your world. I know that you like experiments.”

Sherlock let the girl swipe her lips.

“Irene.”

“Sherlock.”

_She’s not boring._

 


	4. Salvation

“You can impregnate lipstick with all kinds of things. Allergens, poisons! That is what happened!”

“Listen, miss, you really shouldn’t believe everything you read in Batman comics,” sneered the man. The others laughed.

“You aren’t listening!” Sherlock skittered past them and picked up a gold tube. “ _This_ is your murder weapon! It’s very fast and you have to run a very specific blood test, very quickly, to even know it’s been used.”

“This is a crime scene. If you don’t leave, I will arrest you! Hey!” cried the man. He turned. “Oy, you! What’s her name? That WPC.”

“Mary. But she prefers…”

“Well, I’d prefer to give her a bit of the ol’ how’s your father, but that’s neither here nor there. Mary!”

The constable turned.

“Deal with this!” he pointed to Sherlock. “Tea time’s over. On to men’s business…”

 

“Miss, please leave.”

“This is the murder weapon.”

They locked eyes.

“Can you prove it?”

Sherlock took the woman’s arm and wrote on it in pen.

“What are you doing?”

“This is the test they need to run in hospital. Very quickly.” Sherlock brushed the lipstick across mouth and pressed her lips together tightly.

 

The next thing Sherlock heard was the constable’s voice.

“Funny way to get your kicks, isn’t it? Risking your life to prove you’re clever.”

_Funny? It’s brilliant!_

 


	5. Manipulation & Intimidation

“Are you wearing lipstick? You weren’t wearing lipstick before.”

“Yeah, it’s the one that you gave me. The one you were wearing the other night. The night that we were both working late. Together. Well, separately, but _near_ each other. I said it looked nice, and you said that you thought it really favoured me more than you. You let me try it on and then you gave it to me. Then, you asked me about the eyeballs. By the way, the cornea transplant team was really quite cross about that…

“Sorry, you were saying?”

“I was wondering if you’d like to have coffee.”

“Black, two sugars, please. I’ll be upstairs.”

 

 

Sherlock had spotted them from the roof where she’d been smoking. Mike Stanford, clearly just after lunch with an old friend. _Difficult woman to find a flatmate for_. Interfering sod.

Sherlock had just had time to paint on a wine-coloured snarl in the stairwell.

She’d been waiting for them.

She’d been arrogant. Brazen. Brash. Rude. Brilliant.

She’d unfurled her wings. She’d shown her claws, her fangs. She’d breathed smoke and fire, swished her tail and left that poor, befuddled, crippled ( _but not really crippled_ ) woman to stare at her wake. _How ordinary!_

It was as if she had taken her lipstick and written on the wall:

_Dragons, here there be_

 


	6. John

_She’s not coming. Of course, she’s not coming. Why would she come? I was hopelessly rude yesterday. Did the stupid dragon thing. No one wants to share a flat with a high-functioning sociopath._

She was in Speedy’s, chatting with ( _deducing the marital status of_ ) Mr. Chatterjee. Her coat pocket was weighted with three tubes of lipstick. A dragon wine. A camouflage pink. A blood red, chipped tube, faded label, which she’d kept. ( _People do. Sentiment._ )

But Sherlock wouldn’t need them.

_Because she wasn’t coming._

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the taxi.

_How extraordinary._

_Pity no time for war paint._

“Ms. Holmes?”

“Sherlock, please.”

 

 

Six hours later, Sherlock was poking at her dim sum. They’d been eating and grinning and giggling.

“So, this is a typical night for you?”

Sherlock nodded. “I also do experiments, research.”

“I was quite intimidated yesterday, what with your posturing and your all-seeing eye and your swishing about like a bloody firedrake, _Jesus Christ_ , that fearsome maw…”

John put down her fork and reached out her hand. Sherlock stared as the fingertip moved closer and closer until it brushed Sherlock’s bottom lip. It was the faintest of touches, a blink-and-you-miss-it gesture. But so gentle, so knowing, so _intimate_.

_This is my partner._

“…but, you know, I quite prefer your lips like this, bare.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> This has been a nice experiment, trying out some different structures.


End file.
